This is a two part case paper:
Strategic leaders help organizations achieve competitive advantage through effective management of the strategy-making process. With a vision, mission, and goals in place, organizations should conduct a SWOT analysis to develop strategy that exploits external opportunities, builds on and protects company strengths, eradicates threats, and counters weaknesses.
In this paper, you will conduct a SWOT Analysis on an organization of your choosing on 1. Google: The Rise of an Internet Monopoly, 2. IKEA, 3. Uber 2022, 4. Microsoft (A) – The Gates and Ballmer Years, 5. Microsoft (B) – Satya Nadella and the Push into Cloud Compouting.
In this paper, you will conduct a SWOT Analysis on an organization of your choosing on 1. Google: The Rise of an Internet Monopoly, 2. IKEA, 3. Uber 2022, 4. Microsoft (A) – The Gates and Ballmer Years, 5. Microsoft (B) – Satya Nadella and the Push into Cloud Compouting.
To discover SWOT items, search for recent news stories and articles from quality sources (CNBC, the WSJ, Yahoo finance, Regional Business News, Thompson Reuters Westlaw, scholarly articles, your textbook, etc) to determine the most pressing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats the organization is facing. Be sure to cite the source of each SWOT item. You should have a total of at least 20 total SWOT items, from at least 5 different quality sources. It is recommended that you complete the SWOT appendix (see “Appendix A SWOT” attached) before writing your paper, which will shape your thinking for the paper.
SWOT tip: Porter’s Competitive Forces model (Ch. 3) is a good tool for identifying the external aspect: Opportunities and Threats. For the internal aspect (Ch. 4) – Strengths and Weaknesses – it is important to understand the role of rare, valuable, and hard to imitate resources, then consider how these resources lead to superior efficiency, innovation, quality, and customer responsiveness, and finally analyze the organization’s competitive advantage and what opportunities for improvement there might be.
Include:
- Cover page with a descriptive paper title, your name, your program, course title, instructor name, and date
- Paper introduction
- Brief review of the case
- The company’s vision, mission, values, and goals
- SWOT discussion (this will be the longest part of your paper – 2 to 3 pages)
- Conclusion
- Reference page
- Appendix A – SWOT Analysis (see file attached)
Your paper should be APA Style, 3–4 double spaced pages (plus your cover, reference page, and appendix) and have at least 5 quality sources, at least one of which is a scholarly source.
See the grading rubric attached. Save your work as a Microsoft Word document.
Case Paper Part II – Functional and Business-level Strategy
Strategic leaders create competitive advantage through effective management of the strategy-making process. With a vision, mission, and goals in place, and after conducting a SWOT analysis, organizations well positioned to set effective Business-level strategy that supports their Functional-level strategy. When strategy is implemented properly it can help an organization achieve sustained competitive advantage (maintaining above-average profitability for several years).
In this paper you will continue with your Case Paper Part I and propose 1) Functional-level strategies, which are actions that improve the efficiency and effectiveness of one or more value creation activities, which are infrastructure (leadership), production, marketing, materials management, research & development, information systems, and human resources and b) Business-level strategies, which is the overall competitive theme of a business and how the organization positions itself in the marketplace (broad low cost, broad differentiation, focus low cost, or focus differentiation). Remember, Business-level strategies should consider the industry environment.
Include:
- Updated* cover page with a descriptive paper title, your name, your program, course title, instructor name, and date
- Updated* paper introduction
- Updated* review of the case
- Updated* company’s vision, mission, and goals
- Updated* SWOT discussion
- The company’s current industry environment (this section will be approximately 1-2 pages)
- Functional-level strategy suggestions that exploits external opportunities, builds on and protect company strengths, and eradicates/counters threats and weaknesses (this section will be at least 3 pages)
- Business-level strategy suggestions that exploits external opportunities, builds on and protect company strengths, and eradicates/counters threats and weaknesses (this section will be at least 3 pages)
- Updated* conclusion
- Updated* reference page
- Updated* Appendix A – SWOT Analysis
*You will update these sections based upon instructor feedback for your benefit and not for regrading.
Your paper should be APA Style, 8-10 additional double spaced pages and have at least 6 additional quality sources, at least 3 of which are scholarly sources. See the grading rubric attached. Save your work as a Microsoft Word document.